Science Sunday

It seems the collapsed Mayan civilization still defies modern understanding. A group of archaeologists and researchers from Boston University uncovered what they call a “studio” for scribes and astronomers of the Classical period of the Mayan civilization. Inside, they found wall reliefs that were still fairly clear and painted.

A professor from the University of Texas who deciphered the glyphs referred to them as:

The Dresden Codex is the only record we have of the Mayan civilization in its prime, before Christopher Columbus opened the passage to the New World.

Some of the columns of numbers, for example, are topped by the profile of a lunar deity and represent multiples of 177 or 178, numbers that the archaeologists said were important in ancient Maya astronomy. Eclipse tables in the Dresden Codex are based on sequences of multiples of such numbers. Some texts “defy translation right now,” he said, and some writing is barely legible even with infrared imagery and other enhancements.